May 13 Megan Vandermeer

Abstract

Shatter-Glass is about the importance of narrative.
A graphic novel is more like a film than a comic. It is cinematic. It doesn’t say everything right away, and may take a few viewings to understand. When I wrote the first chapter, I was thinking about how the story as if it were a videogame. It starts in this room. What does the character see, hear, feel? How did they get there? They’d eventually have to open the door and progress, so what’s outside the door? Video games don’t just tell the story with expository dialogue. The player can learn a lot about the world they are in from the environment: the sights, the sounds, and the actions of other beings. The information learned from self-guided exploration may end up being more valuable to the player than the system shoving another fetch quest in their face.

So I have her here, waking up and deciding to leave the room. While she’s standing there just trying to figure out what’s happening, there’s so many ways the story could be going. But then she does leave the room. There are the trappings of a hospital but also all of this ...guck over the floor and things growing from the walls. The walls themselves shift towards brown the further she goes. Both she and the reader are trying to figure things out.